As a bipartisan group of senators chips away at the remaining obstacles to an immigration deal, President Barack Obama says he is optimistic that – if lawmakers release a draft bill early next month – he will be able to sign comprehensive immigration reform into law before autumn.

“If we have a bill introduced at the beginning of next month -- as these senators indicate it will be -- then I'm confident that we can get it done certainly before the end of the summer,” Obama said in an interview with Telemundo on Wednesday.

The president repeated that he could still introduce a White House-drafted version of the legislation if the “Gang of Eight” Senate group is not able to put forward a bill. But he said he’s confident that lawmakers will be able to work out the final snags in the negotiations in time to unveil their proposal when they return from a two-week Easter recess next month.

“I'm optimistic,” he said. “ I've always said that if I see a breakdown in the process, that I've got my own legislation. I'm prepared to step in. But I don't think that's going to be necessary.  I think there's a commitment -- among this group of Democratic and Republican senators to get this done.”

The negotiations have been held up in part by continuing disputes between business and labor groups about the conditions of a guest-worker program, particularly the wages and treatment ensured to temporary workers compared to those for American workers pursuing similar jobs.

But the president said he doesn’t believe that the dispute could scuttle the whole reform framework.

“There are still some areas about … the future flow of guest workers,” he said. “Labor and businesses may not always agree exactly on how to do this.  But this is a resolvable issue.”

While he expressed optimism that a final bill will contain a path to citizenship for those currently in the country illegally, Obama would not offer specifics on how long the process of obtaining citizenship should take.

And he declined to outline how the security of the nation’s border should be assessed, saying only that there should be no border security “trigger” that must be met before undocumented persons are eligible to begin the process of seeking legal status.

“We don't want to make this earned pathway to citizenship a situation in which it's put off further and further into the future,” he said. “There needs to be a certain path for how people can get legal in this country, even as we also work on these strong border security issues.”

While the White House has deferred to the Senate group on the legislative language, the president has used the bully pulpit in recent days to urge lawmakers to action and remind the public of the general framework for reform that he supports – including a path to citizenship.

In addition to the Telemundo interview, he also sat down with Spanish-language channel Univision on Wednesday. Earlier this week, the president urged Congress to show “political courage” on the issue during remarks at a naturalization ceremony at the White House.

Senate negotiators say they are close to a final deal.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images file photo

President Barack Obama signs a bill creating the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Ohio during a ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House March 25, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Earlier Wednesday, Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona held a joint press conference with Democrats Chuck Schumer of New York and Michael Bennet of Colorado. The lawmakers traveled to Arizona’s southern border to survey the state of security there, a tour that offered a very real illustration of the illegal immigration issue when they spotted a woman scaling a border fence. (She was later apprehended by border security officers, McCain said.)

At a press conference, Schumer told reporters there that negotiators are “90 percent of the way there” on a compromise bill, adding that the trip offered a glimpse into what further resources are needed to ensure full border security.

“We learned about the great progress that’s been made,” Schumer said. “It’s a lot better than it was 10 years ago, but we also learned that we have more progress to go. And in our immigration bill, we hope that we will make that progress, along with many other goals.”

While the president is hopeful that a bill will move quickly through the legislative process, opponents say the negotiations deserve a longer – and more public – hearing.  

Leading that charge, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama has accused Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of trying to “ram through” the bill with limited debate before the measure hits the Senate floor.

“The massive proposal being cobbled together by a group of Senators in secret must be independently judged and reviewed by the Judiciary Committee in the full light of day,” Sessions said in a statement today. “That will take months — not two weeks — and will require hearings on every aspect of this issue."

A day after a half-dozen Republican senators urged a slower and more public process for the crafting of immigration legislation, a key Democrat said that the timeline for completion of a bill will be delayed because closed-door negotiations have yet to produce a draft. 

In a statement, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy lamented that his goal of completing a tentative version of a comprehensive reform bill by April won’t be met.

“Because we do not yet have legislative language to debate, the Senate Judiciary Committee will not be able to report a comprehensive immigration bill by the end of April, which was my goal,” Leahy said.

Leahy said that he has asked the White House to release its own version of reform legislation “for months” but that President Barack Obama has deferred to the bipartisan “Gang of Eight,” which is working on compromise legislation.

That group, Leahy wrote, has “engaged in secret, closed door discussions on their own proposal and … committed to completing it by the beginning of March.  That deadline and others have come and gone.”

The chairman’s statement comes a day after a group of Republican senators urged a slower process for the reform effort, writing to Leahy that the legislative language could present a “real problem” if it comes to the floor without being discussed in open committee hearings.

"If we are serious about protecting our national interest and the best interests of American workers, we must provide all members of the Senate, and, most importantly, the public, a full and fair opportunity to become adequately informed,” the group wrote.

At the end of this week, the Senate is scheduled to go on a two-week Easter recess. 

This story was originally published on Wed Mar 20, 2013 5:45 PM EDT

They both were elected in 2010 under the Tea Party banner after beating primary opponents favored by the Republican establishment. They’re both rising stars in the modern GOP, and, last weekend, they finished first and second place in a straw poll of conservatives’ pick of a presidential nominee for 2016.

And as they both maneuver to mount their own campaigns that year – or, at least, preserve the option of doing so – Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., must share the spotlight. Intentionally or not, they’re already jockeying to do so.

Both senators have carefully worked to build their national profiles following the 2012 election, using high-profile opportunities to plot slightly different paths toward the same goal.

On no issue is that more apparent than immigration.

Rubio had joined with three other Senate Republicans and four Senate Democrats in recent months to forge a bipartisan framework on a comprehensive overhaul to immigration laws that would provide undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship. The Florida senator embarked on a media tour in the weeks following the framework’s unveiling to sell the plan to skeptical conservatives, doing the legwork to build political cover for the plan (and gain valuable exposure to the Republican base in the meanwhile).

Paul made clear with a speech on Tuesday – in which he unveiled his own plan creating an eventual pathway to citizenship – that Rubio isn’t the only GOP player on the issue. 

“Immigration reform will not occur until conservative Republicans, like myself, become part of the solution,” Paul told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “I am here today to begin that conversation.” 

Both Paul and Rubio might support the broader goal of immigration reform; they both took strides to carve out public roles for themselves in the process. 

For her part, Rubio ally Ana Navarro said the notion of a rivalry between the two men was “overblown by the media.” 

“Rand Paul is a leader in the Republican Party, and he should add his voice to the debate on immigration. His voice can and does make a difference,” she said. “The bottom line is, this is not an issue Marco or any one senator individually can or should carry alone on his shoulders. The more people helping to carry the ball, the more likely we will cross the finish line.” 

But while the two senators might not share a formal rivalry, they are undoubtedly two of the GOP’s biggest stars right now whose utterances alone command attention.

Look no further than last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, where Paul and Rubio finished first and second, respectively, in the gathering’s closely-watched straw poll. A quarter of straw poll participants supported Paul and 23 percent threw their support behind Rubio. (The two gave back-to-back speeches on Thursday at CPAC.) The next closest finisher in the straw poll checked in at 7 percent.

The close finish between the two senators reflects all the work beyond immigration they’ve each done to burnish their profiles in 2013.

Republican leaders, of course, tapped Rubio to deliver their official response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address – a speech that was generally well received for its content, if ridiculed for the Florida senator’s awkward pause for a swig of bottled water.

Delivering the official Tea Party response to the State of the Union that very evening? None other than Paul.

Rubio has also built up his foreign policy credentials by taking a trip in February to Israel and Jordan, and delivering major policy addresses (including one about that trip abroad).

Paul, meanwhile, drew considerable attention for his filibuster of Obama’s nominee to head the CIA on March 6, a 13-hour affair that won him praise from fellow Republicans. (Rubio at one point appeared on the Senate floor to deliver his own remarks in favor of Paul’s efforts.)

"Rand has made progress with the filibuster," said Dave Carney, the chief strategist for Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign and a political consultant based in the influential primary state of New Hampshire. "Neither one has huge advantage here as of now."

Both senators are undeniably positioning themselves with 2016 in mind. Paul is at least open about that, acknowledging his potential interest in seeking the Republican nomination (like his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas) in several interviews. The Iowa GOP on Tuesday announced that Paul would headline their Lincoln Day dinner, further stoking speculation.

Rubio’s team is quicker to downplay the Florida senator’s ambitions, dismissing any talk of a presidential campaign as far too premature, just a few months removed from the last campaign.

But as each of them jockey for pole position heading into 2016, it may fall to the differences between Rubio and Paul to distinguish themselves from each other. For starters, Paul tends to emphasize a more libertarian and cautious foreign policy, while Rubio has generally been more willing to strike hawkish tones.

Both senators’ CPAC speeches are also instructive in parsing out how they make their pitch to conservatives.

Paul made a firm appeal, for instance, to revolutionize the Republican Party, and return the GOP to its small-government, libertarian roots.

“They want leaders that won't feed them a line of crap or sell them short. They aren't afraid of individual liberty,” he said of the new generation of young conservatives, calling the current GOP establishment “stale and moss-covered.”

Rubio, by contrast, emphasized his own biography as the son of immigrants, and stressed aspirational tone in his speech to CPAC.

“We don’t need a new idea, the idea is America, and it still works,” the Florida senator said.

As spring approaches, advocates of comprehensive immigration reform are optimistic that behind-the-scenes bipartisan negotiations are on track to construct long-awaited legislation that could make it to the president’s desk by the end of summer.

But that doesn't mean that everyone’s pleased with the timeline.

In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, six Republican senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee urged further hearings and a slower process on the Senate legislation, which has been negotiated behind closed doors by a bipartisan “Gang of Eight.”

“The last time Congress considered legislation of this magnitude that was written behind closed doors and passed with no process, it resulted in sweeping changes to our healthcare system, the negative consequences of which are only now coming to light,” the six GOP senators wrote.

“If we bring these important issues to the Senate floor without them having been worked through committee, it is a prescription for a real problem.”

The letter is signed by Judiciary Committee members Sens.  Jeff Sessions, Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Orrin Hatch and John Cornyn.

"If we are serious about protecting our national interest and the best interests of American workers, we must provide all members of the Senate, and, most importantly, the public, a full and fair opportunity to become adequately informed," the writers state.

The other two Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Arizona’s Jeff Flake, are both part of the “Gang of Eight.”

That group hopes to unveil legislation next month that would provide a broad framework largely in line with the Obama administration’s priorities for the bill.

But in a statement, Sessions urged a slower and less sweeping approach to address the reform.

"A sound process will take months, not days or weeks," he said. "And we’d be better off taking a step-by-step approach than trying to deal with these complex and emotional issues in one massive piece of legislation."

NBC's Kasie Hunt contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 19, 2013 6:16 PM EDT

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 19, 2013 12:21 PM EDT

Did Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, R, endorse a pathway to citizenship in his speech before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce this morning?

That’s what an Associated Press article previewing the speech said, as well as a report shortly before Paul’s speech published by Buzzfeed.

But the Kentucky senator made no mention of citizenship itself in his speech; he focused his remarks on the need for creating a “legal” status for the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States.

And an unnamed Paul adviser subsequently disputed to the Washington Post the idea that the popular conservative senator had, in fact, backed citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“The AP story was wrong, which spurred a lot of erroneous reports,” the adviser told the Post. “He does not mention ‘path to citizenship’ in his speech at all.”

The difference between citizenship and legal status might seem semantic, but it is an important distinction in the legislative battle over comprehensive immigration reform. Democrats believe that citizenship is an essential element of any final deal, and the bipartisan “Group of Eight” in the Senate working toward a compromise includes such a path in its framework.

The speech was good enough to win praise from Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, N.Y., a major Senate proponent of citizenship.

"The consensus continues to grow in favor of immigration reform that contains a path to citizenship," Schumer said in a statement. "While there are certainly differences between our emerging product and Senator Paul's outline, there is also a lot of common ground."

Paul explained the finer details of his plan to reporters following his speech. In essence, his plan would distribute indefinite work visas to qualified undocumented immigrants in stages, allowing them legal status in the United States. Once those workers have visas, they would then have the option of applying for citizenship – though not necessarily with any preferential or expedited pathway.

“You get in the same lines, you get in the line wherever you sign up, you don’t go to the front of any line,” he explained. “And I know that sounds silly, but front or back of the line seems to be this thing that’s really important to people. So what I would say is, you have the option to get in the line without going home. That’s the main difference from what we have now, as well as you get a work visa if you want to work.”

He also said he wasn’t necessarily comfortable with forcing those seeking citizenship to pay fines.

“And I’m not a huge fan of the fines, necessarily,” he said. “I think a lot of these immigrants are workers who don’t have a lot of money.”

A major sticking point, though, for Paul is subjecting certification of border security to a vote in Congress. In his plan, lawmakers would have an annual option to vote on an administration’s report that the border has been secured before moving forward with the visa process. He said he would try to amend the Group of Eight’s eventual legislation to include something like this.

“I want to try to amend their package, and I would likely vote for it if I could get mine on,” he said, adding that he wasn’t sure whether failing to do so would lose his support.

The conflicting comments and careful language, though, reflect the political difficulty for conservatives in embracing comprehensive immigration reform, especially if it involves a pathway to citizenship. And he took strides to quell those concerns in his speech.

“My plan will not grant amnesty or move anyone to the front of the line,” he said.

President Barack Obama huddled with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill Tuesday, stepping onto congressional turf as part of a week of outreach to both his own party and his GOP rivals.

With new budget and gun control bills snaking through the legislative process -- and with comprehensive immigration reform measures being drafted by bipartisan lawmakers -- Obama’s series of in-person conversations with congressional heavies are meant to smooth the way for compromise after the budget sequester stalemate last month.  

But it’s not exactly a bipartisan campfire kumbaya.

Even as the president was leaving the building, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters that Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn has already said he will object to a bipartisan measure to temporarily fund the federal government -- a snag that could slow efforts to avert a government shutdown later this month.

Jacquelyn Martin / Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. walks toward the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, Dec. 31, 2012.

“This is in this new era of ‘let’s get along,’ all this cheering and yelling about this ‘bipartisan’ bill,” Reid lamented to reporters after meeting with Obama, “I just learned when I was in here with the president that -- who else? -- Coburn now won’t let us move the bill.”

And the news of that hiccup wasn’t the only challenge Obama received during his trek to Capitol Hill.

One Democrat in the room told NBC News that a senior senator in the closed-door meeting challenged the president on his administration’s unmanned drone policy, saying the White House has treated Obama’s own party poorly in dealing with the issue.

The meeting with Senate Democrats -- which participants said included discussion of entitlement reform, immigration and gun control -- kicked off a series of closed-door sessions that Obama has scheduled this week with lawmakers on the other end of Pennsylvania Ave, including a Wednesday luncheon with House Republicans.

His conspicuous “charm offensive” aimed at the GOP started last week, when he dined with a dozen Republican senators as well as with House budget chief Rep. Paul Ryan.

For the most part, Republicans say ‘the more, the better’ when it comes to Obama’s outreach.  

“We welcome it,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

“It’s a good opportunity to have a candid conversation and we all know that, with the president’s request to raise the debt ceiling here again later this summer, we will be discussing again the possibility of finally solving our huge deficit and debt problems by making the kind of changes to [entitlements] that we all know we have to make to save these programs and save our country,” McConnell said.

Still, the effort has not been without some skeptics.

A National Journal report out Tuesday morning quoted an unnamed White House aide griping that the vigorous schedule of bipartisan meetings is “a joke” and a waste of time staged merely to make the press “happy.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed that sentiment as inaccurate during a briefing with reporters.

“I have no idea who said that," he said. "But I can tell you that opinion has never been voiced in my presence, in the president's presence, in the West Wing. It does not represent the president's view, it does not represent the White House's view, and it does not represent the administration's view."

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 5, 2013 1:49 PM EST

In an apparent reversal from his past statements, former Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush said Monday that his immigration reform plan would "fall short" of offering a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants living in the United States -- a key provision being put forward by the bipartisan group leading reform efforts on Capitol Hill.

“Our proposal is a proposal that looks forward, and if we want to create an immigration policy that's going to work, we can't continue to make illegal immigration an easier path than legal immigration,” Bush said on NBC’s TODAY Show.

Bush -- an outspoken proponent of GOP outreach to Latinos who has previously embraced a path to citizenship -- said that he backs measures to allow illegal immigrants to become residents of the United States if they meet certain criteria. But he argued that the possibility of full citizenship would merely encourage more illegal immigrants to make their way inside the nation’s borders.

“There has to be some difference between people who come here legally and illegally,” he said. “It's just a matter of common sense and a matter of the rule of law. If we're not going to apply the law fairly and consistently, then we're going to have another wave of illegal immigrants coming into the country.”

Related: Jeb Bush: I won't rule out 2016 White House run 'but I won't declare today'

Bush’s rejection of that goal appears to be a turnaround for the possible presidential prospect. In a June 2012 interview with Charlie Rose, he acknowledged that his support for a path to citizenship placed him at odds with many in his party.

“You have to deal with this issue. You can’t ignore it,” he said during that interview. “And so, either a path to citizenship -- which I would support and that does put me probably out of the mainstream of most conservatives -- or a path to legalization, a path to residency of some kind.”

In a January op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Bush and Clint Bolick, his co-author on a new book about immigration, wrote that opportunities for citizenship strengthen America. 

"America's immigration system should provide opportunities for people who share the country's core values to become citizens, thereby strengthening the nation as have countless immigrants have before them," he said. (In the same op-ed, the pair also wrote that "amnesty promotes illegal immigration.")

Bush's voiced opposition to full citizenship rights also puts the former governor – and brother of former President George W. Bush – to the right of Republican senators like John McCain, Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake, all members of the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Eight” currently tackling immigration reform legislation.

That group’s proposal would offer “probationary legal status” for illegal immigrants who register with the federal government, pass a background check and pay back taxes and fines.  After certain border security criteria are met, those individuals would become eligible to apply for green cards and – eventually – the ability to seek full citizenship.

Bush appeared on the TODAY show to promote his book “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution,” which hits shelves tomorrow. 

NBC's Mark Murray contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Mon Mar 4, 2013 1:18 PM EST

A recurring fear has colored Republicans’ attitude toward the current immigration reform debate in Congress: President Barack Obama has no actual interest in reaching a deal, and is instead pursuing the issue to exacerbate the GOP’s problems with Hispanic voters.

Yet all of the evidence so far – whether in his speeches and or his relations with Congress – suggests he and his administration clearly want a deal that he could sign into law.

Politics, of course, play an undeniable role in the renewed effort to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, especially given that Obama won more than 70 percent of the Latino vote in the 2012 election. Consequently, Republicans who had previously resisted any legislation that offered a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s some 11 million undocumented immigrants have now reversed course.

Isaac Brekken / AP

In this Jan. 29, 2013, file photo, President Barack Obama speaks about immigration reform Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas.

“The Republican Party is losing the support of our Hispanic citizens and we realize that there are many issues on which we think we are in agreement with our Hispanic citizens but this is a preeminent issue with those citizens,” Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican member of the bipartisan Senate group working toward an immigration accord, said bluntly upon the introduction of that proposal’s framework.

But Republicans have warily engaged the new debate over immigration with active fears that the president’s true intentions on immigration are half-hearted, at best.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s established himself as an outspoken conservative after just a couple of months on the job, was only the latest Republican to give voice to that fear.

“I don’t believe President Obama wants an immigration bill to pass, instead I think he wants a political issue,” he said in a speech on Wednesday, according to a report by the Houston Chronicle. ”His objective is to push so much on the table that he forces Republicans walk away from the table because then he wants to use that issue in 2014 and 2016 as a divisive wedge issue.”

It’s a fear that many of Cruz’s fellow elected Republicans appear to share.

“The question that many of us are asking, Republicans and Democrats, is he looking to play politics or does he want to solve the problem?” Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the former GOP vice presidential nominee, asked during his Jan. 27 appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press” preceding Obama’s major policy speech on immigration.

Republicans carefully watched that speech with concerns that Obama would eventually demagogue immigration. The president generally did the opposite; he used the speech to carefully embrace the bipartisan Senate talks, while warning that the administration would have its own backup plan at the ready for congressional consideration should the Senate talks fail. He further embraced a bipartisan speech in prime time, during his State of the Union address.

“As we speak, bipartisan groups in both chambers are working diligently to draft a bill, and I applaud their efforts,” Obama said. “So let’s get this done. Send me a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the next few months, and I will sign it right away.”

But Republicans’ concerns that Obama will jilt the GOP on immigration very much inform the work toward a comprehensive reform law, and help explain part of the reason why the politics of the issue are so fraught.

When a draft of the White House’s immigration reform proposal leaked over the weekend, Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is helping negotiate the Senate plan, pronounced it dead on arrival in Congress.

“It’s a mistake for the White House to draft immigration legislation without seeking input from Republican members of Congress,” Rubio said in a statement.

Rubio’s scorching statement was also intended to maintain credibility with conservatives, whose support – or, at least, tolerance – of an immigration overhaul the Cuban-American senator’s worked to win.

(And, for his part, Obama said that the leak was but a hiccup. “It certainly did not jeopardize the entire process,” he told an Univision affiliate in Texas. “The negotiations are still moving forward.”)

But as Republicans tread carefully toward an immigration agreement, they might also keep in mind the political skin Obama has put at stake with this issue.

For as ballyhooed as Obama’s 44-point advantage over Republican nominee Mitt Romney among Hispanic or Latino voters has been, the president had to quell frustration among Latino voters about his failure to pursue immigration in his first term. He faced some of his toughest questioning of the campaign on that very issue during a town hall last September with Univision’s Jorge Ramos, who pointedly accused Obama of breaking his promise to bring up an immigration reform bill during his first year in office. Latino activists have repeatedly criticized Obama for overseeing a record pace of deportations during his first term.

What’s more, Obama basically premised his plea for Latinos’ votes on the premise that, if they helped re-elect him, immigration reform would finally be achievable.

“What I’m absolutely certain of is if the Latino community and the American community that cares about this issue turns out to vote, they can send a message that this is not something to use as a political football, that people’s lives are at stake, that this is a problem that we can solve and historically has had bipartisan support,” Obama said in the same Univision forum.

That’s to say: if immigration reform fails during Obama’s second term, there will be more than enough political fallout to spread around.

Fuming Arizona constituents fired criticism at Sen. John McCain over illegal immigration at town halls Tuesday.

“You said ‘build the dang fence’ – where’s the fence?” one constituent named Keith Smith demanded of McCain.

“He doesn’t want the American people to stand up and ask him the tough questions and hold his feet to the fire,” Smith told NBC affiliate KPNX.

McCain told the crowd that Americans would not support a move to arrest all illegal immigrants in the United States and deport them. He also said he wouldn’t support an effort to make people who had been in the United States illegally for decades to become guest workers because “we’re a Judeo-Christian principled nation,” drawing an angry response from some in the crowd.

McCain is a member of a bipartisan group of senators which is now working on drafting legislation akin to the bill which the Arizona senator supported in 2007, in partnership with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D- Mass. and others, to create a process for illegal immigrants to become legal permanent residents of the United States. That effort collapsed mostly due to conservative Republican opposition.

When McCain ran for re-election in 2010, he survived a challenge from a conservative, J.D. Hayworth, in the Republican priamry. And in the general election he emphasized the need for greater efforts to stop illegal immigrants from slipping over the Mexican border – rather than his previous support for a legalization process.

Sen. Marco Rubio really wants nothing to do with President Barack Obama's immigration backup plan.

Rubio's office on Tuesday released a statement insisting that the plan the Florida Republican is working on has "major differences" from the White House blueprint that was leaked to USA Today over the weekend. Spokesman Alex Conant pointed to a number of measures they say are missing from the White House plan: tying the a path to citizenship to border security, a new visa exit system and a plan to deal with future immigrants.

And Conant said no one in Rubio's office has met with the White House to talk immigration.

"President Obama and the White House staff are not working with Republicans on immigration reform. Senator Rubio’s office has never discussed immigration policy with anyone in the White House," Conant said.

On Tuesday, the White House insisted it was in fact working with lawmakers on the issue. Obama has said he wants the Senate to write a bipartisan immigration proposal, but that he'll release his own plan if that process drags.

"We have been in contact with everyone involved in this effort on Capitol Hill," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

Asked to clarify, Rubio's spokesman said the administration had sent agency officials to brief Senate staffers for the bipartisan group of eight senators who are working on immigration reform -- but insisted policy was not discussed.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

"They've never asked for our input. (And, frankly, we've never asked for theirs.)," Conant wrote in an email.
Senior administration officials said that staffers from the White House had attended at least 5 briefings with congressional staffers working on bipartisan reform. At different points, officials from relevant government agencies also briefed the staff group.

Some Republicans have suggested the White House's separate plan could help GOP supporters distance themselves from the president and highlight the compromises in a Senate plan. Rubio's office rejected that analysis.

"The White House has injected additional partisanship into an already difficult process, and raised fresh questions about the president’s seriousness about passing reform," Conant said.